21G Artist's Portfolios

Tony Aldrich

Originally from Lancashire, Tony Aldrich grew up in the South West. Following a career working as an architect in London, Cambridge and Bath, he returned to Devon in 2001 to take up a lectureship in Architecture at the University of Plymouth. He also taught design and developed a postgraduate programme concerned with enlivening students’ spiritual and personal creativity. Throughout this time he returned to the process of painting and drawing that had for him always been ‘at the heart of things’.

In his work Tony Aldrich continues the tradition that regards painting as a meditation upon sensory and emotional experience, an empirical endeavour as much as an intellectual one. He sees art not so much as an antidote to the ceaseless clamour of contemporary life but rather as a conduit for re-engaging within the calm centre that is always there within it, believing that the creation of a painting or drawing is a distillation seeking to capture the ‘essence of being’ rather than the ‘anecdote of description’. Working mostly with acrylic and charcoal, his ability to use space, colour texture and light, produces exciting images. He is not afraid to show his emotion on canvas. In 2013 he committed full-time to his art practice and enjoys the creative development and the opportunities that this affords. He has exhibited his work widely throughout the South West.​